You’d love your kids to learn how to grow their own organic food.
But you know it needs to be fun, so that they’ll enjoy it, and keep wanting to learn. Kids learn best when they’re having fun.
To get your exciting, inspiring kids’ garden school session started, we’ve rounded up a list of awesome ideas that everyone will want to join in on.
1. Grow an adorable grass head.
Instead of planting it with grass, plant herbs like parsley or chives. Kids will find the goofy faces and growing “hair” hilarious, and harvesting it will hopefully make them forget about snipping their own!
2. Grow avocado pips in glass jars.
Watching the large pips growing roots and shoots is a fascinating, visual learning experience – and you end up with an avo tree.
3. Sprout some seeds to eat in salads.
Sprouts grow quickly, are delicious and easy to care for… and the simplest way to observe and learn how seeds sprout. Homeschooling mamas: you’ll love this one.
4. Grow a tasty snacking garden.
My kids can’t get enough of browsing in the garden. It’s the most hassle-free way to get them to eat their veg. Planting seeds is also a productive way to improve fine motor skills for toddlers. Here are some plants that grow fast, are easy to harvest, and delicious to snack on:
Carrots
Peas
Beans
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Cauliflower
Cucumber
Sweet corn
Melons like watermelon and winter melon (if your kids are small they’ll need help to slice these)
Strawberries
Raspberries (these take a little longer to reach harvest time… but they’re so worth it, plus they’re perennial so you don’t have to keep planting them every year.)
5. Create some upside-down tomato planters.
These space-savers will tickle a child’s love of the extraordinary. Cherry tomatoes grow especially well, and make a sweet, colorful, wholesome snack.
6. Plant a beautiful butterfly garden.
Children are delighted by the creative and colorful elements of a butterfly garden. The butterflies are fascinating, and some older kids will enjoy keeping a drawn and written record of the various species that pay you a visit. Smaller children will relish hunting for caterpillars, and watching them crawl across an open palm. Because growing vegetables (for the caterpillars) is part of having a butterfly garden, this is a wonderfully fun and educational way to pick up the skill.
7. Get them excited with a children’s gardening set.
Being the proud owner of their very own set of kids’ gardening tools will inspire them to put their new implements to work in the garden. Our set offers everything that could come in handy: a small watering can, child-sized gardening tools (a high quality, metal-tipped spade, rake and trowel), biodegradable peat pots for seedlings, plant labels and a canvas garden tool bag to keep it all in.
Written by Rifke Hill
About the Author
Rifke Hill was raised on the sort of farm your grandparents told tales about – milking cows, gathering eggs, hoeing the soil, and building fires to heat water. She now spends part of her time copywriting online as a freelancer. The rest of it is spent nurturing and teaching her four energetic children, growing vegetables, baking bread, reading voraciously, having coffee with the neighbors, and enjoying the sunny slopes of the smallholding where she lives, in the Garden Route, South Africa.
